The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.
The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.
The Kiss by the artist.
In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.
This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.
The Example by Dana Schutz.
Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.
And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.
It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.
A geospatial analyst with over a decade of experience in terrain modeling and environmental data visualization.
